Browning Ferris Industries Announces Recycling Plan
Browning Ferris Industries announced on Wednesday an agreement to sell more than 1 billion used aluminum cans a year to Alcoa Recycling Co.
“Our agreement with Alcoa is a major milestone to boost aluminum can recycling nationwide,” said BFI Chairman William D. Ruckelshaus, the former head of the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
Houston-based BFI, one of the world’s largest waste handling companies, collects cans through organized recycling efforts in 170 programs nationwide involving 1.4 million households. Last year, the programs brought in about 1 billion cans, or 2% of the recycled cans.
Until now, each of the programs has been selling the aluminum individually.
“This assures us a market, long-term, for the cans, and it assures Alcoa a source of supply, long-term, for the cans,” said BFI spokesman Peter Block.
As part of the agreement, the two companies also will work to expand the collection programs.
“Municipal curbside recycling programs represent a major new source of aluminum available for recovery,” said Alcoa Recycling President George Cobb, calling recycling an “above-ground aluminum mine.”
Alcoa Recycling paid $232 million for 17.1-billion cans in 1989, spokesman Al Posti said from the company’s Pittsburgh headquarters. About half of the sheet aluminum Alcoa sells for cans comes from recycling, he said.
Alcoa will pay BFI market price for the cans.
The deal with Alcoa is the third agreement BFI has reached to get rid of the waste it collects. Last year Wellman Inc. agreed to take recyclable plastics. In June, Weyerhaeuser Paper Co. agreed to take 10,000 tons of paper a month in the western United States.
